


The Cold, Empty Pulse of Night

by elrhiarhodan



Category: White Collar
Genre: Angst, Depression, Longing, M/M, UST
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-03-21
Updated: 2013-03-21
Packaged: 2017-12-06 01:01:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 2,986
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/729869
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elrhiarhodan/pseuds/elrhiarhodan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Neal longs to forget, if just for the space of a single night</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Touch

The music pulsed like a living thing, hard and hot and vital and Neal gyrated like a dervish. His body rocking to the beat and moving without conscious thought. It didn’t matter than Neal was surrounded by a hundred other bodies – the anonymity made it better. Dancing together, they were like a living organism, joining and separating and reforming into a single whole, only to split apart with the next beat, the next breath.

Neal had been coming to this club for months. He found it by accident one sleepless night. He was running through Riverside, trying to forget, trying to force his body into exhaustion. It didn’t work, but he kept at it. It was better than lying in bed, thinking about everything he couldn’t have. He had paused at a corner and noticed a pair of well-dressed men disappear into an empty office building. 

Letting his body grow still, Neal listened and felt the beat of the music. Another couple, two men in matching Armani approached and he followed them. The bouncer at the door denied him entrance. He was sweaty and messy and even underground gay dance clubs had standards.

The next night, Neal was admitted with an obsequious smile. Why wouldn’t he be - dressed in obscenely tight black pants, a white shirt opened to the third button and black leather gloves. The dance floor was packed with writhing bodies and he plunged right in.

No one touched him; no one could - no matter how beautiful, no matter how desirable. That wasn’t what he wanted. He was here to exorcise his demon for the space of a single night.

Tomorrow would bring more hurt. Peter would smile, touch his arm or his shoulder and his heart would break. It always did, and he thought it always would.


	2. Heart

_I’m losing him._  
  
Peter stared at the bedroom ceiling. It was three AM, another in a series of sleepless nights, and all he could think about was Neal. How he was fading away. Peter wondered how long it would be until Neal simply wasn’t _there_ anymore.   
  
His friend and erstwhile partner was still brilliant, there was rarely a case he touched that they couldn’t solve. But there was something missing. That vital spark that made Neal Caffrey so present in the world.  
  
Colleagues like to joke about the overly-refined tastes and demeanor of his CI, but they never looked beyond the vintage suits, the artistic talent, or the polished surfaces Neal presented to the world. They didn’t know about dedication it took to maintain that appearance, the raw intelligence that could be channeled into almost any discipline. Very few people understood the effort it took to _be_ Neal Caffrey.   
  
Peter got up; the anxiety driving him out of his bed. Not that sitting on the couch in near-darkness was any better. He held the picture that El had taken of the two of them, the one that disturbed Kramer so much. He rubbed his thumb over Neal’s face, imagining that he could feel the roughness of his beard. A moment of closeness frozen in time.   
  
For a long time, there hadn’t been much closeness. A moment here, a moment there. It never was like it used to be. And now, it looked like it never could be again.  
  
Neal was going someplace. Not physically, though. He’d have to wear that shackle for a few more years. No, Neal’s absence was that of the spirit – the essence that which made him Neal Caffrey – which was slipping away.   
  
And Peter was terrified. He was losing Neal and didn’t know how to stop it.


	3. Cold

Elizabeth rolled over and reached for her husband. But Peter wasn’t there. That, more than any restless tossing, was certain to wake her up. She opened her eyes, the clock read 4 AM, and Peter’s pillow was cold. 

This wasn’t the first night he had left their bed in search of some solace she couldn’t seem to provide. She knew the problem was Neal – it had been for a long time. She knew Peter was worried, but he wasn’t willing to discuss it. And that had her worried. For the better part of two years, much of their life seemed to revolve around resolving the problem labeled “Neal Caffrey.”

She never minded – Neal brought something to their lives. Or more accurately, he brought something to Peter that made him a better man. She didn’t think she would have ever been less than satisfied with her life if Neal hadn’t burst into it, but she knew that if he were gone for good, he’d leave behind an unfillable hole. 

El went in search of her husband, to offer whatever comfort he needed. She found him sitting in the near-dark. 

“You okay?”

Peter looked up; even in the dim light she could see how haunted he was. She could also see him shove something into the couch cushion. He finally answered. “Yeah, just couldn’t sleep. Must have had too much coffee.”

She called him on his bullshit. “Since when did coffee become another name for Neal?”

Peter slumped into the couch. “I don’t know what to do, El.”

She sat down next to him and held him close. “Isn’t it time you told him?”

“That will only make it worse. He’ll run again, this time for real.”

“Don’t be too sure of that, Peter. You don’t always see Neal so clearly.”


	4. Run

Neal was leaving bits and pieces of himself on that dance floor and on the streets and sidewalks of the neighborhood. 

There were too many nights now when all he wanted to do was stay home, busy himself with a fresh canvas or a clean sheet of sketch paper, but he couldn’t find a spark of inspiration. Neal knew what was wrong. To create meant finding a moment of stillness, a quiet place away from the stress and noise of everyday life. But he had become afraid of that quiet, afraid of what he would find if he looked too deeply. 

So he danced and let the cacophony of the music and the pulse beat of a body in endless motion replace the quiet spaces of his soul.

The mornings after were difficult. The mirror didn’t lie. Nor did the clothes that had once fit like a glove, but now hung lose on him. Clinton brought him coffee and asked him if he was all right. Diana told him that Christie would be happy to give him a checkup and have blood work done, free of charge.

Peter; however, said nothing. Neal didn’t fool himself into thinking that Peter didn’t care, it was just that Peter knew him, knew that he’d brush off the concern like lint off his jacket.

Neal danced, and the nights that he didn’t dance, he ran. He wanted to be too tired to dream, too worn out to hope; too drained to care. But it didn’t work, he still dreamed – waking with Peter’s name on his lips, and the dreams twined around him like veils of silk. He still hoped, as pointless and as cruel as that hope was. And Neal knew he’d couldn’t stop caring, not even when he was dead and dust.


	5. Evidence

It had been months since Peter pulled up a map of Neal’s tracking data. Since the debacle of his commutation hearing, he just didn’t have the heart to check on Neal like that. It wasn’t necessary. Neal wasn’t going anywhere.

But this situation couldn’t continue. This laissez-faire approach wasn’t working. Neal was disappearing before his eyes, and Peter wondered if he wasn’t going to follow him into oblivion.

He didn’t want to interfere with Neal’s life – at least insofar as his life didn’t include criminal behavior. But something was making his gut churn, and seeing Neal in such obvious distress meant he couldn’t just let this go and wait for the inevitable crisis.

It was time to be a friend, even if he couldn’t be anything else.

He tugged Neal up and out of his chair with a one word command: “Lunch.” Fifteen minutes later, they were ensconced in a corner booth. He didn’t wait on pleasantries.

“Neal – what’s wrong? What’s going on?”

“Why would you think there’s any wrong?” Neal gave him a brilliant and utterly fake smile.

“Because you don’t sleep anymore – and don’t bother to lie to me. I’ve pulled up your tracking map.”

“We’re back to that, now?” There was a thread of hostility in Neal’s tone. Peter ignored it.

“You’re out running three nights a week – or should I say mornings, since you don’t leave your apartment until after midnight. And the nights you aren’t running – you’re not at home until four am. Then you come to work early, you stay late and the whole thing starts all over again.” Peter took a deep breath. “You can’t tell me that nothing’s wrong. I’m worried about you, Neal.”

“You don’t have to worry about me, Peter. You’re not my father.”

“No, thank God, I’m not.”


	6. Heat

Neal froze. He didn’t know what Peter meant by that. He had always figured that Peter looked on him like a wayward son or brother. That’s what made his own feelings so hard to reconcile. He loved Peter, with all the doomed grace of Abelard for Heloise. 

The server brought their coffee and Neal hid his confusion behind the cup. 

“Neal - tell me, what’s wrong?”

He took a sip, put the cup down and shrugged. “Insomnia.”

Peter didn’t say anything. He didn’t believe him.

“It’s the truth - I can’t sleep. I go for a run, come home exhausted and get a few hours in. I don’t like to self-medicate.” He waited for Peter to ask what he did, where he went on the nights that he wasn’t running. But Peter didn’t ask.

“I am so sorry about what happened with Kramer – if I hadn’t brought him in originally, none of what happened would have happened.” Peter asked, regret and compassion in every syllable.

Neal shook his head. “It’s okay – we’re back to normal, mostly.” He looked down at his hands, but didn’t see them. “What you said, what June said, even Clinton. Hughes and Bancroft, too. I’ve never had people care about me like that.” He laid his hands flat on the table, fingers spread, hiding nothing. “Maybe I worry that I’ll never live up to that.”

He looked at Peter, but Peter’s expression was now unreadable. “We all care about you - you are part of us now.”

Peter reached out and put a hand on his and Neal didn’t know if he could keep breathing. In all the ways that Peter had touched him, it was never this disastrously intimate. The contact was hot, scalding and Neal couldn’t take his hand away, he’d rather be burned to ashes.


	7. Skin

Something was happening. It wasn’t Neal’s so-called insomnia. His face was flushed - or maybe it was a blush, and in the brightly lit courtyard of their favorite burger place, Peter could tell that Neal’s pupils were dilated when they should have been constricted. The skin under his fingertips grew hot enough to burn.

Peter watched in fascination as Neal’s pulse jumped. The rapid beat was visible under his skin - that vulnerable exposed strip above his collar. He licked his lips and Neal’s flush deepened, the skin he was still touching grew hotter, and black consumed nearly all of the blue in Neal’s eyes.

He froze as comprehension dawned. He knew what it was. Just the other night, when he and El were out for a romantic dinner. They were talking and laughing and their eyes met about the champagne glasses and he forgot how to breathe. Part of him was terrified, but a larger part was triumphant. Years of longing, years without any expectation - to find out that just maybe there were feelings there. That maybe there was a chance for them.

And as soon as the thought occurred to Peter, he ruthlessly boxed it up and put it away. Neal was shackled to him - back under this control like before. Anything more than CI and handler would put them both beyond the pale.

Neal blinked and swallowed and Peter smiled, hoping that he could read the silent message there. That he wasn’t alone in this. That the desire was there for him, too. 

But he didn’t. 

Neal looked away - his gaze skittering from the napkin on the table to the edge of the umbrella flapping in the slight breeze to the tray of condiments. He looked everywhere but at Peter.

Devastated, Peter slowly removed his hand from Neal’s.


	8. Secret

Something just happened. Something wonderful and impossible and completely insane. 

And he had to be mistaken. For once, Neal hadn’t been able to control the tide of desire that flooded through him at Peter’s casual touch. He felt his pulse race and he was certain that he flushed bright red.

Peter looked at him the whole time - first curious, then worried, then … happy? There was a small, secretive smile on his lips. An expression Neal had only seen once before, in a moment of intimacy between husband and wife, a moment when Neal shouldn't have been looking.

Now, he had to look away. He didn’t see what he thought he saw, and to give any response would shame him beyond recovery. He and Peter - they’d come so far, there had been so many obstacles, so many times that their friendship had been tested to the breaking point. Each time, they recovered. But their recovery wasn’t the cliché – they weren’t any stronger. Those stresses took their toll on what he had to call his most important relationship, the one he needed the most. 

Neal worried that if he acknowledged what he thought he saw, everything would come to a crashing, catastrophic end.

So he looked away and Peter took his hand away and Neal told himself that this is how it was. That he didn’t see what he thought he saw and he was just going to have to live with that.

Peter asked him something - whether he was taking anything to help him sleep. Neal made a non-committal answer. He’s tried PM-this, PM-that, he’s dosed himself with melatonin and chamomile. Peter was about to suggest something else and Neal told him running was the only thing that helped him get to sleep. 

Quite ironic, wasn’t it?


	9. Sun

Peter didn’t press Neal any further, not when he was so close to breaking apart. 

They finished lunch and before heading back to the office, he gave Neal a direct order. “Go home, go get some sleep if you can.”

Neal didn’t move. “There’s no point. I don’t sleep in the middle of the afternoon, and even if I did – it would wreck any chance of sleep at night.”

“It’s a beautiful day. Go onto your terrace and lay out under the sun – pretend you’re on the Cote d’Azur.” Peter tried for a little humor. “How often will you hear me tell you that?”

Neal smiled, but shook head. “You’re quite the boss – ” 

Peter tried not to grimace at that particular title, it wasn’t one he particularly wanted to hear. 

“ – telling me to go home and lay out in the sun. That won’t do anything for your reputation as a hard ass.”

“Caffrey – Don’t think I’m getting soft. I just want you in tip-top shape. The Westfield Securities operation starts tomorrow.”

“I knew there was an ulterior motive to your kindness.” The light sarcasm didn’t deflect a thing.

They stood there, Neal with his hands in his pockets, and Peter with his hands on his hips, both men stubborn and immovable. Peter dropped the humor, dropped the mask. “Neal … I’m worried about you.”

“Don’t be. I’m all right.”

“Forgive me if I disagree with you. We’ve had this dance before, remember?” Peter didn’t move, and he didn’t care what his face, his posture was betraying.

Neal’s smile didn’t reach his eyes. “Don’t worry, Peter. I’m not going to steal a gun and try to shoot someone.” He turned in the opposite direction, towards the subway, but before walking off he turned back. “But thank you for caring.”


	10. Stars

Peter couldn’t concentrate on the caseload when he got back to the office. He coasted through the afternoon meeting, and when Diana asked if he was coming down with the same bug that Caffrey seemed to have, he shrugged and made an off-hand comment about summer colds.

He called up Neal’s tracking data again, this time zeroing in on the address where he seemed to spend so many hours. Peter had thought it was a bar, or maybe an all-night coffee shop, or a diner. But the address was an office building, the anonymous kind. Fifteen floors of doctors and lawyers and accountants. No coffee shop, no bar or restaurant or any kind of place that would be opened from midnight to four in the morning.

Whatever the hell Neal was doing there three nights – three mornings a week was destroying him. Peter intended to find out just what it was and put a stop to it. Neal was far too … important … to lose him to. He’d handle Neal’s inevitable anger. 

He left the office, telling Diana that he’d be in late tomorrow. Whatever was happening at Broadway and 92nd Street wasn’t going to be visible during the daylight, and he suspected his unofficial stakeout was going to last well after the stars had set.

Elizabeth packed a sandwich for him, smoked turkey on rye. Somewhere along the line, Peter had lost his taste for eating deviled ham when Neal wasn’t in the car with him. As he sat there, a replay of the night’s Yankees’ game playing softly on the radio, Peter watched as a stream of well-dressed men and a few women disappeared into the building. None of the upper floors were lit, but something was going on.

Whatever it was, he didn’t like it.


End file.
